Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

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McAfee Lands in Miami: I'm Free

Software mogul John McAfee has been released from detention in Guatemala City and has landed in Miami.

Immediately upon landing, according to passengers on the plane, McAfee's name was called and he was whisked off the aircraft. Federal officials escorted the 67-year-old Internet antivirus pioneer through customs spirit him out a side door, out of the view of reporters, according to Miami International Airport's communication director, Greg Chin.

It was not clear whether officials intended to help McAfee avoid the inevitable media circus or wanted to question him. However, he has not been charged with committing a crime in Guatemala or Belize, where the authorities have sought to question him about the murder of his neighbor.

McAfee's departure from Guatemala came earlier today.

"They took me out of my cell and put me on a freaking airplane," he told ABC News. "I had no choice in the matter."

McAfee said, however, that Guatemalan authorities had been "nice" and that his exit from the Central American country was "not at all" unpleasant.

"It was the most gracious expulsion I've ever experienced," he said. "Compared to my past two wives that expelled me this isn't a terrible trip."

McAfee said he would not be accompanied by his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, but is seeking a visa for her. He also said he had retained a lawyer in the U.S.

Guatemala's National Police/AP Photo

John McAfee Arrested in Guatemala Overnight Watch Video

Software Founder Breaks Silence: McAfee Speaks on Murder Allegations Watch Video

When he was released earlier today, McAfee told the Associated Press, "I'm free. ... I'm going to America."

McAfee, who had been living in a beachfront house in Belize, went on the run after the Nov. 10 murder of his neighbor, fellow American expatriate Greg Faull. Belize police said they wanted to question McAfee about the murder, but McAfee said he feared for his life in Belizean custody.

He entered Guatemala last week seeking asylum, but was arrested and taken to an immigration detention center. He was taken to the hospital after suffering a nervous collapse and then returned to the detention center. The U.S. State Department has visited McAfee, who is a dual U.S.-British citizen, several times during his stay in Guatemala.

During his three-week journey, said McAfee, he disguised himself as handicapped, dyed his hair seven times and hid in many different places during his three-week journey.

He dismissed accounts of erratic behavior and reports that he had been using the synthetic drug bath salts. He said he had never used the drug, and said statements that he had were part of an elaborate prank.

Investigators in Belize said that McAfee was not a suspect in the death of Faull, a former developer who was found shot in the head in his house.

McAfee told ABC News that the poisoning death of his dogs and the murder just hours later of Faull, who had complained about his dogs, was a coincidence.

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Today on New Scientist: 11 December 2012

Out-of-season's greetings from the Arctic frost flowers

Season's regards from an icy meadow in the Arctic, but it's no winter wonderland and please don't dash out into it

How hacking a mosquito's heart could eradicate malaria

Watch how a double-pronged trick helps mosquitoes remain healthy while carrying disease, a process that could be exploited to eliminate malaria

New drug lifts hard-to-treat depression in hours

A new class of drugs that changes the way neurons interact in the brain can rapidly lift people out of depression

E. O. Wilson and poet laureate on altruism and mystery

Leading evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson and former US poet laureate Robert Hass discuss free will, wilderness and the mysterious origin of the arts

Souped-up immune cells force leukaemia into remission

Genetically engineered white blood cells have been shown to have a strong impact on leukaemia after just three months

War of words: The language paradox explained

If language evolved for communication, how come most people can't understand what most other people are saying?

AC/DC's Highway to Hell sent via a drone's laser beam

A dose of rock music proves that a drone's reconnaisance data can be sent via reflected laser beam instead of radio

'Biology is a manufacturing capability'

Soon we'll be able to engineer living things with mechanical precision, says Tom Knight, father of synthetic biology

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UN Security Council to meet over N. Korean launch

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council will meet Wednesday to discuss North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket in defiance of threats of sanctions, a Western diplomat said.

"The Japanese and the Americans have requested a Security Council meeting, which will take place late Wednesday morning" around 11:00 am (1700 GMT), the diplomat said.

Japan's chief government spokesman Osamu Fujimura told reporters in Tokyo that the Japanese envoy had already called for UN Security Council president Morocco to "swiftly summon" the council to a meeting.

The Western diplomat predicted the special talks would likely see a "strong response" at the council to the rocket launch that Seoul, Tokyo and their Western allies swiftly condemned as a disguised ballistic missile test that violates UN resolutions triggered by Pyongyang's two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

North Korea had confirmed hours earlier the launch of a long-range rocket and said it had succeeded in its mission of placing a satellite into orbit.

A previous launch of the same Unha-3 rocket in April had ended in failure, with the carrier exploding shortly after take-off.

In 2006, the Security Council imposed an embargo against North Korea on arms and material for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. It also banned imports of luxury goods and named individuals and companies to be subject to a global assets freeze and travel ban.

In 2009, it imposed a ban on North Korea's weapons exports and ordered all countries to search suspect shipments.

According to Japanese reports, Japan, the United States and South Korea have agreed to demand the Security Council strengthen sanctions on North Korea to levels that match those on Iran.

That would include increasing the list of financial institutions, entities and individuals subject to asset freezes.

Much will depend on the stance taken by UN veto holder China, North Korea's sole major ally and its biggest trade partner and aid provider.

- AFP/ck

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Start-Ups Silicon Valley Ep. 6: Booty calls and booted dolls

Hermione sans dildo.

(Credit:
BravoTV Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Last week, we left our protagonists on "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" hanging on the end of a strap-on.

No, wait. It was Hermione (blonde, British, boozer) who was hanging on to a strap-on at the end.

Her brother Ben (short, pretty, pretty short) was livid with her, even though it was her birthday party. One doesn't play with sex toys in front of VCs.

Not unless those sex toys are social and can entice 100 million users within a week.

Ben reveals to Hermione something more important than whether they lost $500,000 to her dildo dancing: he isn't going to pursue a relationship with Sarah (blonde, big-headed lifecaster).

Well, he has Ashley, you see. She's a model entrepreneur. Actually, that's not quite right. She's a model/entrepreneur. They have been seeing each other for four years. When they're together, they're on. When they're not together, they're entirely off.

"It's perfect,' explains Ben, off-handedly.

A cute girl in an ugly world
Meanwhile, another perfect pair -- Kimmy (dark, deeply ambitious, dullish) is hanging out with Dwight (light, tight, hairy).

Dwight and Kimmy besmirch Sarah as being a sad, dumb freeloader. Her greatest advantage, they opine, is that she's a cute girl in a place where most people are ugly.

Oddly, Dwight and Kimmy are cute too. Kimmy, though, is very serious about her fashion site, Shunova.

What kind of fashion site is it? Shunoidea.

Ben and Hernione are off to try another investment pitch. This time, they encounter former astronaut Esther Dyson. Hermione immediately sucks up to Dyson that she's wearing space pants in her honor.

Dyson looks like she would love to suck Hermione up in a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

Ben enthuses about Ignite, their app that is all about being able to predict your lifespan. And, um, motivating yourself to die later than you might.

Ignite also includes a pad that you step on and, oh, measure things. This is colloquially known as the
iPad. Dyson asks to see it.

There's a slight problem. It doesn't exist yet. Dyson looks like she'd happily suck Ben up into a Dyson too.

A booty call ignited
But what of David (gay, sane)? His start-up is called Goal Sponsors. It's sort of similar to, um, Ignite. Without the iPad and the actual calculation of when you're going to die. But with sponsors.

Yes, it's AA for the health-neurotics.

"We just have a lot of chemistry and not a lot of time to sleep."

Is this David talking about his start-up? No, it's Ben talking about his model relationship with Ashley. He describes it in British as "snuggles." He translates this as "booty call."

Ben is worried that with Ashley in town he will not be able to use his head. Really.

The potential investors from Gramercy Ventures -- together with Dyson -- go to see prototypes of the Ignite Pad. It's a bathroom scale. But because you can give it more meaning through your smart iPhone, it's a very smart bathroom scale.

Potential investor Michael Gale -- he who may (or may not) have been offended by Hermione's strap-on performance -- asks whether "Ignite" is too male a brand name. Hermione goes into an imaginative explanation involving sperm.

Ben suddenly looks as if he is about to give birth.

"When Ben and I first kissed, she came two days after."

A slightly odd chain of events, you might imagine. Actually, this is Sarah's tale of woe concerning Ashley's sudden arrival at the last SXSW. Sarah has heard Ashley is in town now. David explains to her that they're both gorgeous.

Yes, of course they're at a party. Sarah is upset. David tells her he understands. Sarah believes Ben is trying to have his cake and eat it.

There's quite a lot of cake on Sarah's face. But, as yet, no egg.

Ignite has ignition

Meanwhile, Gale explains to Ben and Hermione that he doesn't like egg on his face either. He hates looking stupid. But Dyson actually likes the Ignite idea, so, together, they're going to give them $500,000.

Yes, the strap-on didn't make the investors stroll off. There was a clue when the meeting started. Gale brought some red champagne. Yes, blood red.

Hermione celebrates with her human strap-on. He's called Jay. She worries he's gay. Because he's keeping her at bay.

But then she decides that's a good thing. She must, after all, concentrate on her start-up.

Sarah booted
But first, another party.

"It's going to take a certain kind of guy to ever be able to deal with me," offers Hermione to Ashley. Yes, indeed. An insane guy, might be one thought.

Oddly enough, Hermione then chooses the next moment -- entirely by coincidence -- to tell Ashley that Sarah had been on a date with Ben. Yes, a date that included kissing.

More Technically Incorrect

"I didn't know that you guys were together," Sarah tells Ashley. With typical sensitivity, she goes on to insist that Ben had told her there was nothing between him and Ashley.

Oh, other than that he had mentioned that Ashley was stalking him.

Ashley gets shirty with Sarah. She demands that she lay off Ben. Sarah confronts Ben. She asks him to admit that he called Ashley a stalker.

Ben denies it and then utters a line that must have been fed to him: "You want to create drama wherever you are."

Yes, Ben, they do, those wily producers.

Meanwhile, Sarah is left to sniffle and philosophize.

"When girls are taken advantage of by a guy, we should stand together," she says.

It's as if she's never watched any of the "Real Housewives" franchise.

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Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory

This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.

Full story>>

Why We Love It

"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published December 11, 2012

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Shooter Kills Self After Oregon Mall Rampage

A masked gunman opened fire today at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two people, injuring one, and then killing himself.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound," Lt. James Rhodes of the Clackamas County, Ore., Sheriff's Department said today. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families. The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital.

Rhodes described the shooter as an adult male.

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man in a white hockey mask and bulletproof vest tore through the Macy's, food court, and mall hallways firing rounds at shoppers beginning around 3:30 p.m. PT today.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the busy mall full of holiday shoppers after the shooting began.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

911 Calls From New Jersey Supermarket Shooting Watch Video

The gunman entered the mall through a Macy's store, ran through the upper level of Macy's and opened fire near the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after another, with what is believed to be a black, semiautomatic rifle, according to witness reports.

Katie Tate said she was in the parking lot of the mall when she saw the shooter run by, wearing a mask and carrying a machine gun, headed for the Macy's.

"He looked like a teenager wearing a gun, like a bullet-proof vest and he had a machine, like an assault rifle and a white mask and he looked at me," she said.

Witnesses described the shooter as being on a mission and determined, looking straight ahead. He then seemed to walk through the mall toward the other end of the building, shooting along the way, according to witness reports.

Those interviewed said that Macy's shoppers and store employees huddled in a dressing room to avoid being found.

"I was helping a customer in the middle of the store, her and her granddaughter and while we were looking at sweatshirts we heard five to seven shots from a machine gun fire just outside my store," Jacob Rogers, a store clerk, told ABC affiliate KATU-TV in Portland.

"We moved everyone into the back room where there's no access to outside but where there's a camera so we can monitor what's going on out front," Rogers said.

Evan Walters, an employee at a store in the mall, told ABC News Radio that he was locked in a store for his safety and he saw two people shot and heard multiple gunshots.

"It was over 20, and it was kind of surreal because we hear pops and loud noises," he said. "We're next to the food court here and we hear pops and loud noises all the time, but we don't -- nothing like that. It was very definite gunshots."

Police are tracing the weapon used in the shooting.

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Doha summit launches climate damage aid

The latest summit to stop climate change, held in Doha, Qatar, over the past two weeks has been roundly slammed. Little was agreed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and the latest modelling, carried out by the Climate Action Tracker consortium shows global averages temperatures are still set to rise by at least 3 °C above pre-industrial levels.

There was one breakthrough: developing countries won a promise from developed ones that they would compensate them for losses and damage caused by climate change. The deal offers the promise of large amounts of climate aid. But first, science will have to catch up with politics.

All countries will suffer from climate change. There will be consequences even if humanity slashed its emissions and stopped temperatures rising more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, the stated goal of the UN negotiations. In actual fact, with emissions rising faster than ever, a 3 or 4 °C rise is likely this century.

The consequences will be manifold. Deserts will spread and lethal heatwaves become more frequent. Changes in rainfall will bring droughts, floods and storms, while rising seas will swamp low-lying areas, obliterating valuable territory. Food production will fall.

Before Doha kicked off, the charities ActionAid, CARE International and WWF released a report arguing that rich countries should compensate poor countries for such damages. Tackling the Limits to Adaptation points out that climate change will cost countries dearly, both economically and in less tangible ways such as the loss of indigenous cultures.

Two-pronged approach

So far, climate negotiations have taken a two-pronged approach to the problem. On the one hand, they have sought to create incentives or imperatives to cut emissions. On the other, they have established a pot of money for poor countries to pay for measures that will help them fend off the unavoidable consequences of climate change – such as sea walls and irrigation systems.

That, according to some, leaves a third element missing. Helping those who suffer the consequences of climate change is a moral obligation and must be part of any treaty on climate change, says Niklas Höhne of renewable energy consultancy Ecofys. The idea of climate compensation has been around since the early 1990s, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was negotiated.

In Doha, a coalition including China, the Alliance of Small Island States and the G77 group of developing countries pushed for it to revived.

They proposed a scheme that would decide when countries had suffered climate harms, and compensate them. It would be a form of insurance, and the greatest international aid scheme ever. The idea gained momentum after Typhoon Bopha struck the Philippines last week, and that country's negotiator Naderev "Yeb" Saño broke down in tears during a speech. And, although developed nations had little incentive to agree, the conference concluded with a promise to set something up next year.

Compensation poses a fundamental challenge to climate science, which still struggles to work out if trends and events are caused by greenhouse gases or would have happened anyway. "We can't say that an individual event was caused by climate change," says Nigel Arnell of the University of Reading, UK. "What we can do is say that the chance of it happening was greater."

Systematic tests

Some climatologists are now running systematic tests to decide whether extreme weather events are caused by climate change. They run climate models with and without humanity's emissions. If the odds of a particular event are different, it suggests it was at least partially driven by emissions. By this measure, the 2003 European heatwave and 2011 Texas drought were both made more likely by human emissions.

But this science is in its infancy. We can confidently attribute large-scale trends and temperature changes, says Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. But changes in rainfall, and short-term events like hurricanes, are harder because we do not really understand them. Trenberth speculates that superstorm Sandy would not have flooded the New York subways without climate change, but says it's not possible to prove.

Arnell says that might prove unworkable. Gradual changes – such as rising sea levels, melting glaciers and ocean acidification – are easy to attribute to climate change but their consequences difficult to cost; sudden events are easy to cost but difficult to attribute.

There may be another possibility. Rather than examining individual events, climate models could predict the extra climate-related costs each country would experience, allowing regular payouts. "That would be a way round it," says Arnell. Delegates at next year's conference will have to consider these questions.

Positive step

Harjeet Singh of ActionAid in New Delhi, India, calls the Doha deal "a positive step forward". But it is only an agreement in principle: no money was committed, and even a promise to do so in the future was left out of the final text. Edward Davey, the UK's secretary of state for energy and climate change, said it was "far too early" to talk about committing money. "We aren't saying there should be compensation," he said.

Singh says the developed world would save money by cutting emissions now, rather than letting temperatures rise and then paying compensation. Small island states were keen to get an agreement on loss and damage because emissions cuts are going so slowly, making dangerous climate change almost certain. The Doha agreement is a first step towards dealing with the consequences of that failure.

On 'other business'

Aside from agreeing to make compensation available for loss and damage, the Doha summit achieved little. Nearly two decades ago, the world's governments set out to agree a binding deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Doha included some baby steps towards a deal in 2015, but that is not guaranteed and in any case will come too late to stop dangerous climate change. Only Lebanon and the Dominican Republic made new emissions pledges.

The talks were bogged down in rows over financing. In a deal that was separate to the adaptation fund, developed countries had promised in 2009 to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations prepare for climate change. Between 2009 and 2012 they allocated $10 billion a year. In Doha they refused to say how they would scale that up, simply promising to "continue" – leaving developing countries unsure if or when they would get more.

The Kyoto protocol was renewed until 2020, but its global effect is likely to be limited. Its value is partly symbolic, to show that binding agreements can be reached, and as one of many small and medium-scale projects to cut emissions.

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Google Maps lets users explore NASA's 'Black Marble'

Google Maps' interactive "Earth at Night" feature that lets users explore the planet once the sun sets.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET)

Google Maps is now letting users explore Earth's far-reaching lands filled with flickering lights using imagery from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's "Black Marble."

The Web giant announced the launch of its own Earth at Night today, which is a global view and animation of the images taken from NASA and NOAA's jointly operated Suomi NPP satellite. These series of images show what the Earth looks like from space once the sun sets.

"It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands," Google wrote in its description of Earth at Night. "This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet."

NASA and NOAA released the series of nighttime photos last week giving earthlings the clearest view yet of what our illuminated planet looks like after dark. Besides the 312 orbits, NASA and NOAA's project required an extremely powerful Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite sensor to capture 2.5 terabytes of pictures. The cloudless shots were then compiled and sewn onto the classic "Blue Marble" imagery.

In Google's new interactive map, users can search from continent to continent to see what different countries look like on the Black Marble -- from the Sahara's darkness to New York City's bright glow to the smattering of lights throughout all of India.

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U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London

The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.

As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.

In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")

A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.

Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."

The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")

Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."

A Big Role for Gas

If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")

The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.

As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.

Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.

The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")

A Tougher Road

But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.

A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.

Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.

Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."

In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.

Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:

• In France, the EIA's estimate is that shale gas reserves total 5 trillion cubic meters, or enough to fuel the country for 90 years. But in September, President Francois Hollande pledged to continue a ban on fracking imposed last year by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.
• Poland was also thought to have rich shale gas resources, but initial explorations have determined that original estimates of the country's reserves were overstated by 80 percent to 90 percent. After drilling two exploratory wells there, Exxon Mobil stopped operations. But because of its dependence on Russian gas, Poland is still keen to begin shale gas production.
• South Africa removed a ban on fracking earlier this year. Developers are eyeing large shale gas reserves believed to underlie the semidesert Karoo between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
• Canada's Quebec Province has had a moratorium on shale gas exploration and production, but a U.S. drilling company last month filed a notice of intent to sue to overturn the ban as a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
• Germany's Environment Ministry has backed a call to ban fracking near drinking water reservoirs.
• China drilled its initial shale gas wells this year; by 2020, the nation's goal is for shale gas to provide 6 percent of its massive energy needs. The U.S. government's preliminary assessment is that China has the world's largest "technically recoverable" shale resources, about 50 percent larger than stores in the United States. (Related: "China Drills Into Shale Gas, Targeting Huge Reserves")

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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